“That’s my guess, too,” Butch agreed.
The phone rang, and Joanna hurried to answer it. “Howdy, boss,” Jaime Carbajal said. “Sorry to bother you at home.”
“It’s all right. What’s up?”
“I had an appointment to finish my interview with Dee Canfield today. Like I told you, I did a preliminary with her yesterday, but she was so anxious about getting ready for the show that she barely paid attention to my questions. Since she was so distracted, I made an appointment to see her this afternoon at the gallery.”
“And?”
“She wasn’t there. Her boyfriend wasn’t, either. The place is still closed up tight, just like it was last night. The sign’s still on the door. There were two notices – one from FedEx and one from UPS – saying they had attempted deliveries.”
Joanna felt a twinge of concern. She had been pleased to hear Dee had canceled the show, thinking the gallery owner had come to her senses. Now there was a far more ominous possibility. Only one person in town had been absolutely determined to shut down that grand-opening party.
“Did you go by her house?” Joanna asked. “Maybe she’s ill.”
“Sure did. She lives on Cochise Drive out in Huachuca Terraces. I stopped by twice,” Jaime said. “Nobody was home. The blinds are down and the curtains closed. Something’s not right here, Sheriff. I have a really bad feeling about it. If there’s still no sign of her or Warren Gibson by tomorrow morning, I should probably get search warrants and go through both the house and the gallery.”
“Maybe they decided to take a few days off,” Joanna suggested.
“I doubt that,” Jaime said. “For one thing, I talked to Gina Dodd at Desert Stairs Catering. Dee hired Gina to supply the food for last night’s party. The first Gina knew about the cancellation was when she showed up with a vanful of food and found the sign on the gallery door. Gina says Dee never would have done that without calling. She says that’s not the way Dee Canfield does business. Gina’s convinced something is terribly wrong.”
“Do you think Gina Dodd’s word will be enough for you to get a search warrant? And will you be able to get one on Saturday morning?”
“By the time I talked to Phyllis Kelly, Judge Moore’s clerk, he was gone for the day,” Jaime replied. “He and his wife have a dinner engagement in Tucson. I’ll have to catch up with him in the morning. Phyllis says I can bring the paperwork by his house then.”
“Did you talk to Bobo Jenkins about any of this?” Joanna asked. “He had a disagreement with Dee Canfield over Rochelle Baxter’s show, but I believe he and Dee have been friends for a long time. Maybe he knows where Dee and Warren might have gone off to.”
“I didn’t actually talk to Bobo today,” Jaime said. “What I got instead was a call from Burton Kimball. He says he’ll be along for the ride when Bobo Jenkins comes to talk to us at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Joanna was surprised. “Bobo’s bringing Cochise County’s premier defense attorney along for the interview? How come?”
“You tell me. I told Mr. Kimball all we want is to ask Bobo a few routine questions. Burton hinted that he thought our reasons for wanting to talk to his client were possibly politically or racially motivated.”
“Politically or racially motivated?” Joanna repeated. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“I’ve heard talk that Bobo Jenkins is thinking of running for mayor,” Jaime offered.
“He can run for governor, for all I care,” Joanna shot back, angered by the implication. “Bobo is one of the last people who saw Latisha Wall alive. He was also raising hell in Castle Rock Gallery yesterday morning, not long before Dee Canfield and Warren Gibson disappeared. Of course we need to talk to him. That’s not race or politics; that’s police work. If Bobo feels a need to have Burton Kimball along to hold his hand, it’s his problem, not ours.”
There was a pause. “Are you okay, boss?” Jaime asked.
“What do you mean, am I okay?” Joanna demanded, trying not to sound as irritable as she felt. “Of course I’m okay.”
“Kristin told me that you went home early, which, you have to admit, isn’t like you,” he said. “She thought you weren’t feeling well, and you do sound a little…”
“A little what?”
“Well… cranky,” Jaime replied reluctantly.
Joanna didn’t want to sound cranky. Or unreasonable. “I’m fine, Jaime,” she assured him, deliberately softening her tone. “What time is that Bobo Jenkins interview again?”
“Ten.”
When her other homicide detective, Ernie Carpenter, had asked to take a full week of vacation all at once, it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. “When’s Ernie due home?” she asked.
“Monday.”
“I wish it was sooner, but that’s the way it is. All right, then. If Bobo is bringing the big guns in with him, you’d better have some backup as well. Call Frank Montoya and ask him to be there with you.”
“Will do,” Jaime agreed.
“All the same,” Joanna added, “I’ll be in the office. When you’re done with the interview, come tell me how it went.”
“Okeydokey,” Jaime Carbajal responded. “Who needs weekends anyway?”
He hung up and Joanna turned back to Butch. “What was that all about?” he asked.
Joanna explained as best she could.
“Dee Canfield,” Butch said. “The woman who disappeared. Who’s she again?”
“She owns the gallery where Rochelle/Latisha’s art was going to be exhibited. Even with the artist dead, she was going to go through with the grand opening last night, but then she didn’t. Jaime Carbajal tried to go to the party himself, but the gallery was closed up tight, and it still is, more than twenty-four hours later.”
Butch lifted a pot lid to check on the potatoes. “I can hardly wait to read next week’s paper,” he said. “No doubt Marliss will figure out a way to make all of this your fault as well.”
At that moment Jenny meandered into the kitchen. “What’s your fault?” she asked, opening the refrigerator door and examining the contents. “What’s for dinner?” she added. “It smells good, and I’m starved.”
“Pork chops and gravy,” Butch replied. “Along with mashed potatoes, string beans, and apple sauce.”
“Great,” Jenny said. “Everything except the string beans.” Butch’s fried pork chops were her unqualified favorite. Reaching for a clean glass, she poured herself some milk.
“So what’s your fault, Mom?” Jenny asked, sipping her milk and studying her mother’s face over the rim of the glass.
“At the moment, one person is dead and two others are missing,” Butch explained. “I was saying that in Marliss Shackleford’s next column, she’ll probably try to blame all of it on your mother. That’s Marliss’s usual modus operandi.”
“Oh,” Jenny said, taking her half-empty glass and heading into the dining room. “Is that all? I thought you guys were back to talking about putting a train track in the family room.”
Butch shot Joanna a quizzical look. Joanna sighed.
Eight
IT WASN’T A PARTICULARLY NICE WAY to begin celebrating my birthday. For one thing, I had to be up and out of Belltown Terrace by five in the morning in order to make that 7 A.M. Alaska Airlines flight to Tucson. It was pitch-dark as I climbed into a cigarette-smoke-saturated cab driven by a non-communicative maniac. I wasn’t about to give the state of Washington access to the condo’s communal limo.
The rain was pouring down as we headed for the airport, but I didn’t regard that as any kind of ill omen. After all, it was the last week in October. Everybody knows it rains like mad in Seattle in October. And maybe that’s why the seven-o’clock plane to Tucson was loaded to the gills. It was full of people wanting to trade chill autumn rain for
